Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight.
“This started off with building small sensors for the government — microphones, cameras, things that detect metal,” says Paul Kohl at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who presented the work at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in California this week.
The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl.
[...] They based their polymer on a chemical called an aldehyde and mixed in other chemical additives that can either make it rigid for use in a glider or sensor, or flexible to make a fabric for a parachute.
Sunlight or artificial light can trigger the material to go poof. Or, in true spy style, a small light emitting diode can be placed inside a device to trigger the self-destruct process on demand. All that’s left behind is a residue and a faint smell, which Kohl says are from the additives that control the rigidity of the material.
Kohl says he and his team have already made a glider with a six-foot wingspan from the material. It can only carry objects weighing about 1 kilogram, so it could only be used to covertly transport objects, not people, for the moment. The glider would have to travel under cover of darkness to avoid disintegrating in flight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:01AM (5 children)
Attack operations in China? Or Seattle?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:09AM (1 child)
Protect your airspace with UV searchlights. Also useful against vampires.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday August 27 2019, @09:24AM
BTW have they tried the wooden stake and the silver bullet against the stuff. One wouldn't want to discover other vulnerabilities when it's already deployed...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:09AM (2 children)
Doesn't mater.
The countermeasure is as simple as a UV laser on a light-fan scan pattern.
If UV in sunlight is enough to destroy them, industrial UV lasers with powers of 10-40W will shred the glider at conveniently large distances.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:35AM (1 child)
... and into conveniently large pieces for study.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:46AM
Assuming those pieces remain intact on impact and can be recovered during the same night, yes.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:22AM (2 children)
So, when the glider does go down in the morning, who will be rightfully bombed in retaliation?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:31AM (1 child)
I hope we can nuke the sun. Send all the nukes there at once. Would need larger rockets than for Voyagar missions, but well, better start building now.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:19PM
It seems fiscally wasteful to nuke the sun when it is so much easier to nuke the earth.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:26AM (1 child)
So the very latest in spy tech makes it to the front page of the SoylentNews? Really? When we could have had a very nice aristarchus submission with even more actual evidential basis. So here it is: Spies lie. There tech development teams lie. The Governments that pay their salaries lie. The alleged Precedent of the United States lies. So why is this Fine Spy Article on the Front Page of the Soylent (non-spy)News? Huh? I really want an answer, or I and many others will have to follow AK.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday August 27 2019, @02:04PM
Because it is about technology, and not the alt-right.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday August 27 2019, @06:30AM (6 children)
Why is the USA obsessed with battlefield things. This could as well be for fire monitoring or wide area non-polluting data gathering. It could be for Noooo. *battlefield* and other such thing. What an obsession.
So much research into the battlefield yet fires happen in apocalyptic dimensions in California. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by Mer on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:20AM
Why would you need UV self destruct for either of those things? A regular drone would do the trick and probably be more convenient.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday August 27 2019, @08:22AM (2 children)
"The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. “But you don’t want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works,” says Kohl."
Replace the word 'battlefield' with 'earth' and you will have the correct idea which way this is going.
Everyone is a combatant, all of the time. Everything is primarily a weapon, and then we might get some beneficial tools if there is no value in its secrecy.
The 5kg 'package' they want to deliver to the moon will always be weapons though. The people who want to blow everything up all the time aren't very bright, so they have to find pretty lies to tell us technologists so we help them build the world to suit their nightmares.
But looking for a human agenda in scientific development at this point may be hopeless, the job vacancy ad might as well say 'Intelligent masochists with no moral compass needed to help develop the next generation of human/cattle control mechanisms.'
But if you tell the people who 'love america' it can be used to explode people who speak different languages and wear funny clothes on the other side of the world, you don't need to even print out any explanatory materials, it just gets approved.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:03AM (1 child)
They don't want to blow everything up all the time, they're scared - living in constant fear that somebody else might blow them up, and so they want to make sure they can blow everybody else up just to be sure they at least get revenge, and maybe instill enough fear into the "other side" to ensure their safety. MAD - just as sane as it sounds.
If you look across the last 100 years, most children used to be raised in fear of their parents, and by extension all adults or anyone big enough to cause them harm. All in all, it would seem that we're better off in this brave new experiment of raising children without a near-drowning in fear daily psychology, but, if you think about it, it's extremely un-natural. Only the apex predators could even pretend to not live in fear, and most of them still have plenty of mortal enemies.
As old as our politicians are, they certainly saw some application of fear to control themselves and their peers - it's not surprising that they still live that way.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday August 27 2019, @07:40PM
I would feel a lot more comfortable if the paranoid bunker dwellers did not seem to want to dissect my brain while I'm still living in order to make me a more accurate stick figure in their war game, or outright control the future of my country by playing miltary spy games on unsuspecting civilians while pretending to be under civilian control.
Then handing all that data on me over to epstein and co so they can covertly ruin my life and get away with all crimes.
Yeah, you can see my usa usa usa chant is growing feint...
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:58AM
Fire monitoring? As in: if the thing self destructs, there might have been a fire there?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:21PM
Why are Defense Contractors obsessed with battlefield things.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:14PM (1 child)
The Icarus glider
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:19AM
Given the photo-decomposition, Dracula or Vampire are other choices.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday August 27 2019, @03:29PM
Payloads? A self destructing glider could carry: PA chemical or biological weapon. The delivery glider disappears just as it reaches the end of its dispersal pattern at dawn.
Since it is paper, encode a QR code on it which is the sooper sekrit key. A UV LED can quickly self destruct that key. (before QR codes there were these 'punched cards' and 'paper tape'.)
Paper to write secret messages on, which must be kept in the dark. (also works for presidential executive orders)
Clothing that self destructs if you don't get home by dawn.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)
Is it possible to use this technology for reducing usage of clamshell plastics (you know the type where your blueberries or croissants come in). Clamshell plastics don't get recycled very well and just end up in landfills. They try to burn them for energy production purposes but that's still not a very good method since there are some pretty toxic side effects.
There really should be an X-Prize for better recycling methods of plastics so it doesn't end up in our water (drinking and ocean) or in the animals we rely on to stay alive (food).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:44AM
Those things would end up buried in the landfills, not exposed to sunlight.
If you increase the lifetime of the plastic so that it doesn't disintegrate before someone buys it and takes it home, that's a greater chance that it will survive.